Movies and SlideshowsBurning Studio's Movie and Slideshow Authoring module uses a wizard interface to take you through the steps required by this type of project. First you choose your media type—DVD, Blu-ray (720p), or Blu-ray Full 1080p HD. (You can also create Video CDs and Super Video CDs.) You then choose a screen format—for TV output, either PAL or NTSC, and for computer screen widescreen or standard 4:3 aspect ratio. Then you just add content in the form of images and videos, and the program determines what quality (i.e., bitrate) to output based on the size of your content and output media. I liked that I could not only add media from my PC's hard disk, but also from my online accounts like , Facebook, and Dropbox. Unfortunately, YouTube wasn't available.

But you can do more than just add clips and images—the program lets you author movies and slideshows using themes like Action, Birth, Breaking News, and Horror—25 are included, and you can download a $14.99 Theme Pack with dozens more. I could add text and shapes to the movie, as well as music and a choice of 19 transitions. I could also trim the beginning and end of video clips, split it, or cut out a section from the middle. One problem I had, though, was that I couldn't expand the timeline view of my clips, which were jammed together. And some of my clips couldn't be included because of a lack of codec support.

In all, I was impressed with Burning Studio's digital movie skills—it even let me rotate video clips—but for real editing, even things like changing the brightness, colors, and other effects, you'll need true video editing software, such as our Editor's Choice, CyberLink PowerDirector ($99.95, 4.5 stars). After editing, I could add a menu to the movie, from 15 theme and color choices. Creating and Burning a menued DVD with 4 clips and one a single, to a 4.7GB DVD took 7:13 minutes on my 3.4GHz quad-core test machine with 4GB RAM, writing to 16X DVD-R media. A similar project in NCH Express Burn took 8:48 minutes. I will say that the menus Ashampoo created looked blotchy on playback, so again, you're probably better off with purpose-made DVD authoring software. I was pleasantly surprised that I could add menus and chapters to a Blu-ray disc project, too; the same project in Blu-ray took 5:42 to format and burn (compared with 7 minutes for NCH).

Ripping and ISOsBurning Studio also lets you go the other way—ripping disc images to the PC from CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-rays. You can then create a modified copy of the disc to a new one, adding files even to a bootable disc. But I couldn't rip copy-protected discs, as you'd expect. Even further in the reverse direction, you can erase an –RW disc. I could also burn a disk image file in ISO format. I used the 3.4GB Windows 8 installer disc ISO to test this, writing to a 16x DVD, which took 4:54 minutes. This compared favorably with competitors: Nero Burning ROM 11 took 4:59, and CyberLink Power2Go took 5:10 for the same job. As with other burning operations, the program showed an estimate of time remaining and progress bars for each operation.

Blu-rayThe disc-burning suite can create Blu-ray movies (including menus, just as with DVD movie discs above) and data discs. It can erase BD-RE media, which it did very quickly for my test movie project, taking just a few seconds. When I tried ripping a Hollywood movie Blu-ray, The Big Year, the program made me wait for 20 minutes while it read the whole disk, even though the label said it was copy protected. But when I went to burn a copy, my Blu-ray media wasn't compatible. I was surprised that copy protection allowed me to copy the disc, but maybe the fact that the require 50GB Blu-ray media costs from $10-$25 a pop had something to do with that. Clearly, though, Burning Studio would have no problem ripping non-DRMed Blu-rays.

ExtrasAshampoo throws in a bunch of extra capabilities with the software, including the ability to burn slideshow disks from Flickr ($24.95 a year, 4.5 stars), Facebook, Dropbox, or Picasa accounts. When choosing images for a slideshow disc, the file-picker dialog offers icons for the content site. You log into your account after clicking on the familiar icons. All my Facebook photos were then available, even wall photos—something not possible in Apple's Aperture.

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You also get disc label-printing capability, and you can even download an image from the internet directly in the program to create a disc-case cover, booklet, CD jewel case, or disc label. If you don't have your own image, the program supplies themed label images with topics like Adventure, Bachelorette, Birthday, and so on, which you can customize with your own text.

Finally, the app can “finalize” discs, whether CD, DVD, or Blu-ray, which will make them compatible with certain disc players.

But all was not sunshine and simplicity: When trying to re-edit a group of clips in a movie, the program stopped responding. Otherwise, my extensive testing of the software went without a hitch.

All Your Burning NeedsAshampoo Burning Studio is a full-service CD, DVD, and Blu-ray burning, ripping, and authoring suite. The interface is much slicker than competitors like NCH Express Burn or ImgBurn, but not quite as glossy as those of CyberLink's competing app. But Ashampoo had a big advantage over that competitor in its ability to author Blu-ray movie discs. Burning Studio performed all tasks I tested admirably, and for its superior set of tools and superior interface, it's PCMag's Editors' Choice for disc burning software.

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Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services (pretty much the progenitor of Web 2.0) for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine’s Solutions section, which in those days covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered Web...
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